Land Mines in 0.15

[thereaverofdarkness]

It appears land mines have received a much needed buff: now they deal 300 damage. I'm not sure when this happened but last I remember they did something like 40 damage. This buff makes them potentially worth using, however when I tried using them against a swarm of enemies, most of the mines got destroyed by the enemies. I didn't use mines much before this, but other players talking about mines never mentioned this, so I'm guessing this is new behavior? With their 15 hit points it is certainly a problem, as it can mean few or none of your mines actually go off. Even a medium spitter can kill one almost instantly, and I suspect even medium biters can kill them with their new 2 tile attack range. I think enemies should mostly ignore mines rather than attack them the same way they attack other structures. The point of a mine is it's supposed to be something you don't really notice.

Speaking of not noticing them, the new artwork for mines is great. It actually blends in with the dirt somewhat and it's smaller.

[AndrewIRL]

It appears land mines have received a much needed buff: now they deal 300 damage. I'm not sure when this happened but last I remember they did something like 40 damage.

Yes, they did.

Greatly increased the damage of Mines. They also stun nearby enemies when they explode.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-169

[troonie]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Land_mine

However, if a biter notices the player placing a land mine, they will quickly destroy it without causing an explosion.

I also noticed that it takes a couple seconds for a mine to borrow before activating. In my test biters tended to destroy it before it could borrow.

[Frightning]

Main use of Land mines is to augment base defenses, a line, a few mines deep tiled right at the edge of turret range will greatly thin their numbers and stun the poor fools for your towers to chew apart easily, and they can be replaced automatically by your construction bots too.

[Engimage]

Main use of Land mines is to augment base defenses, a line, a few mines deep tiled right at the edge of turret range will greatly thin their numbers and stun the poor fools for your towers to chew apart easily, and they can be replaced automatically by your construction bots too.

And in the case of heavy biter activity with flame turrets out there this will effectively burn all your construction bots which will be forced to travel through burning areas.

And again upvoting construction bots 100% fire resistance

[Vals Loeder]

Main use of Land mines is to augment base defenses, a line, a few mines deep tiled right at the edge of turret range will greatly thin their numbers and stun the poor fools for your towers to chew apart easily, and they can be replaced automatically by your construction bots too.

And in the case of heavy biter activity with flame turrets out there this will effectively burn all your construction bots which will be forced to travel through burning areas.

And again upvoting construction bots 100% fire resistance

Downvoting bots 100% fire resistance

[Fuller]

upvoting personal shield generators for constructon bots

[Daz3]

I would have expected land mines to be 'invisible' to biters, or at least ignored in favour of more tempting targets (like turrets). The biters shouldn't know to destroy the mines from range unless 'brain bugs'/hive minds or any of those suggestions get implemented.

Whats the AoE for a landmine? Is it big enough that, should it explode on destruction, it could kill/injure whatever attatcked it? (I don't use them myself.)

I'll try to find the right thread for this later but wouldn't the bots being immune to friendly fire make more sense?

[Koub]

Whats the AoE for a landmine? Is it big enough that, should it explode on destruction, it could kill/injure whatever attatcked it? (I don't use them myself.)

https://wiki.factorio.com/Land_mine

[Nasabot]

Landmines still dont make sense.

Even if they oneshotted any enemy(=dealing 99999 damage), they would be borderline useful.

[Frightning]

Landmines still dont make sense.

Even if they oneshotted any enemy(=dealing 99999 damage), they would be borderline useful.

They're quite useful in their current state. All you need to do is have Roboports with construction bots along your defense perimeter and automate Land mine production, and then the bots will automatically replace any mines that detonate. Since they now do 300 Explosive damage each (and the recipe makes 4 of them for just 1 Steel plate and 2 Explosives), it's a pretty cheap and effective defense (you only need a 'wall' a few mines deep to protect yourself from most attacks), and a light bit of turret coverage can easily pick off any that manage to slip through).

[BlakeMW]

I suppose land mines could work well with "wall maze" defenses, make a fairly direct open path through the walls, add land mines to the path, then when a swarm comes the first one which runs forward will be initially missed by the flame turret but hit a land mine and get stunned, all the other biters will get fire rained down on them. Also the other biters will probably be willing to wait a couple of seconds to see if the path opens up before they start biting the walls. The ultimately problem with this scheme is that laser turrets require no resources at all, while a fire+land mine defense requires oil and landmines. Unfortunately also landmines are just as expensive to research as laser turrets to research so you can't get them earlier (this is relevant especially to Deathworld, where cheapness of tech is always a very good trait)

[Engimage]

Sadly in this case you will most likely lose all your construction bots as they will die in a fire painfully trying to replace those mines. Both flame turrets and biters will ensure this happens.

[BlakeMW]

Sadly in this case you will most likely lose all your construction bots as they will die in a fire painfully trying to replace those mines. Both flame turrets and biters will ensure this happens.

I actually came up with a scheme to help mitigate that problem (not using landmines, but flame turrets and walls). You just place the roboports so far back from the wall that the walls are barely within range. When a swarm attacks it'll be wiped out by the time the bots arrive to make repairs - of course this depends on having a low robot speed upgrade, but at the point of the game where you'd consider using flame turrets that's probably going to be true. Also some losses to bots are entirely acceptable, they can be replaced automatically after all and make half decent chaff.

With landmines specifically it might be helpful that a bot carrying landmines wont be carrying repair packs, so it'll place the new mine and skedaddle back to the roboport rather than hang around making repairs. Bots are so dedicated they'll keep turning around and going back into battle to make repairs until either their health or repair packs run out - since it takes quite a while for a load of repair packs to run out usually the health runs out first (= death). That shouldn't be such a problem for landmine bots as the game has no just cause to send them back into the battle.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I did find it easy to mitigate flame damage to bots by setting the roboports further away, but the problem then is that upgrading their speed is beneficial in some areas and harmful in others. They should have some AI that makes them wait before repairing tiny amounts of damage. I'm thinking when a unit begins taking damage, a ten second timer starts. If its HP goes below 80%, the timer ends early. When the timer ends, the bots go to repair the structure. You should be able to tweak the exact timer for individual roboports or bot networks.

upvoting personal shield generators for constructon bots

Howabout shield beacons for bots? It could be an equipment that goes either into your armor for personal bots, or into the roboport's equipment grid for factory bots. There would be two modules: shield beacon and shield transmitter. The shield beacon adds max shield charge to all bots within supply range, and the shield transmitter adds a rate of power transfer to bot shields. There would be a max rate an individual bot shield can recharge and a max total recharge rate per roboport, both increased with each shield transmitter module. That way if a bot takes a bit of damage, it's not even repairable so no other bots will come after it at all, and they won't need to.

Bots that go outside of supply range would have their shields gradually drain over several seconds, at a set rate. The higher their shield amount when they leave supply range, and the faster they move, the better their shields last while they operate outside supply range. Overall shields should be a weak defense, best for preventing bot losses and repair catastrophes during light incoming damage, not for defending bots from a siege.